The One Where "We Don't Have Enough Time"

The 7 Week Countdown Begins!

Yep, our second son is due to land mid August. Which made it incredibly hard to set out on my own, running my own business in February. Our 5 year old son, Leo is currently testing the limits of his 'alpha male' status at bed times, and between that, looking after my wife who doesn't want to be looked after, 'nesting' activities in the house, and the business... it's pretty full on here.

So much so, that I nearly forgot to create this week's newsletter!

If you go a week without hearing from me, please drop me a linkedin DM - likelihood is I fell asleep!!!

Even Marketing Agencies Hate Writing Their Own Content!

It's 100% true. I've yet to speak to another agency owner who tells me they have all the time in the world to create their content, or that they prioritise it the way they should.

If the folks who make content for OTHER businesses feel that way... what chance do you, the Business Founder/CEO at a non-marketing agency have?

Add to that, if you're involved in a technical business, such as SaaS software etc... then you probably find it REALLY hard to narrate what you do for your audience... in a way they care about.

So, what to do?

There are loads of options here, but let's just cover a few of them....

1. Start doing it yourself
2. AI Repurposing Software
3. Hire someone to do it in house
4. Hire an agency

Any of those appealing to you?

Nope... didn't think so. Most people would agree.

What we see a lot of, is folks who WISH they had decided what they were doing 6 months ago, but put off and procrastinated, thinking they would get round to it 'next week'.

Option 1 is obvious - but if it was going to happen, you'd probably already be consistent with it, making it work for you, or you'd have hired an agency to do it for you, and be pretending that you do it yourself for the glory on LinkedIn (So many influencer CEO's who do this, I can't even begin to tell you!).

Option 2 is great in theory... this is a space to watch, as technology gets ever smarter. Unfortunately it's currently prone to embarrassing transcription errors, incorrectly formatted videos, and dead space in your outputs. This has a long way to go before it can replace a good workflow... but certainly cheap.

Option 3 is risky. How do you know they will do well at it? How much support will they need? Will they get bored and leave just as they're starting to hit the track? There are so many risks in this, and we see people struggle for 2-3 years with a mishmash of content branding, styles, and copy as a result. Not a great look for your 'expert brand'.

Option 4 is often costly, but delivers. Unfortunately, the cost is often so high, that you can't afford to even test the waters - any agency worth their salt will pre-load costs into the front end to prevent 'tyre kickers' who want to trial it for 1-2 months to see what leads it brings in. For reference, if that's the sort of results you want... you're looking at the wrong strategy. Content will bring results over time... but not for 6-9 months, generally. That's why it's important to pick an agency partner who shares the same ideals, motivations, and purpose as you at the beginning. And above all else, be patient!!

It's not easy!

That's why I created this newsletter - to help you with all of these problems, and to give those of you who want to give content a go yourself, a chance to understand the right and wrong ways of doing things.

We're close to 2,500 subscribers now, on edition 4. There's a TONNE of interest out there, and social/content B2B marketing has never been so exciting, or important for businesses.

The point of today's newsletter, is to let you know - that if you're struggling with any or all of the above... it's OKAY. Honestly, we all struggle with the same things. Above all else, pick something, stick with it, and be consistent. Be brave, and stay focused, especially if you're doing it yourself in the early days.

Automation is key

When considering your strategy, you likely have 1 or 2 social platforms you plan to focus on - where you can either prove your ideal client lives, or where you think they live, based on other businesses similar to you, and their success strategy.

That's great... but it doesn't mean you can't be across the others.

As a rule of thumb, I focus almost entirely on LinkedIn. My clients and network are here, and there's endless possibilities in digital marketing and consulting work. But that doesn't mean we're not putting content out on other channels... quite the opposite, we're very active all over the place - it adds to the credibility and noise we create.

How do we do that? We automate.

One of the best tools I can recommend for this, is SocialBee - (find out more here). It's a social scheduling platform that allows you to connect all of your social media accounts.

More than that, they allow you to create 'categories' for your posts to go into, allow you to re-queue posts (think - those 'evergreen' business posts that you want to put out, showcasing testimonials, case studies, benefits etc!?) and also to find old posts that performed well, and highlight them to be added back to your queue - with perhaps a wording tweak.

Other ideas here, as that you can import content via an 'RSS Feed'. If you don't know what an RSS feed is, think of it as a news ticker tape for your business. Most businesses don't have one - but if you have a podcast already, you will... and if you upload videos to youtube, your playlists and channel each have their own RSS feed to work with. This means that you could create content on Youtube, and your social channels all pull that through into your feeds and post it automatically - with no need for you to do anything in the middle!!!!

You can also create one post, and edit the variations to go out across all your different socials. Very easy to add different hashtags, call to actions, or other appendices at the bottom of your posts for example.

Bulk upload is an option, so if you've got a stash of content you want to upload and put out quick and easy, you can do so... and it'll even let you add the first comment to ask thoughtful questions, or point your audience to your website.

In short, it's an amazingly powerful platform, and one that for the price of it, is very reasonable, and easy to work with.

Keep an eye out for a more detailed walkthrough on our YouTube channel at some point! (Give us a Subscribe so you don't miss it!).

Hope you found this helpful. If you'd like to know more about SocialBee, content workflows, or automation, drop it in the comments, and hopefully we can answer for everyone to benefit from the help... or we can cover it in more depth in a future newsletter.

Have a great Friday, all!!

Paul Banks

[email protected]

www.linktr.ee/JavelinContent